Commentary: WikiLeaks 'War Log' fills in some blanks

The cognoscenti back in Washington, D.C., shrug and say there are no surprises in WikiLeaks' massive dump of documents related to the war in Afghanistan.

The trove may or may not rise to the level of the Pentagon Papers, the secret history of the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War. WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange may or may not be a latter-day Daniel Ellsberg, the military analyst who delivered the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971.

But these new documents should not be lightly dismissed. They fill in blanks in the public's knowledge about what has become our nation's longest war.